Redesigns
From time to time Newgrounds has a major site Redesign. The staff will store up a number of plans, talk about them in threads, fix it up ready, then add and take away features. Redesigns can be a controversial time on Newgrounds as people get attached to things the way they are and sometimes the Staff give up on features that are not working satisfactorily, to the disappointment of those who like the feature. However, overall, they give an opportunity for the team to introduce anything from a different art style to a whole new Portal. The major redesigns require the site to go offline while work is done, which in itself causes a great fuss as thousands of people are left without one of the most popular sites on the internet. 2000 This was the vital year in which the new "Automatic" Blam/Protect system started in the Flash Portal, it was https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/1 .which revolutionized Newgrounds. At that time only the last person to vote on the submission in Judgment got the points. 2003 in feb 2003. Happy tree friends smoochies were made. After being hired as Newgrounds's media designer earlier in the year, Stamper designed a new layout. This redesign's changes were largely aesthetic. 2007 This was one of the bigger redesigns on Newgrounds, where various features were added or improved and some features lost. The anticipation was immense at the time, with lots of speculation as to what would happen. Save Tank Sm_gif User speculation of forthcoming changes lead to a campaign to keep the tiny yellow tank pic called Tank sm_gif, even though there were no stated plans to lose it. A twelve page thread ensued; at least four movies were submitted; a band of users put a Save Tank Sm_gif in their sig and a page was made at YTMND. Tank sm_gif was indeed removed from the main pages, but it is still used as the icon when you fav Newgrounds and here in tiny corners of Wikigrounds. New Experience Levels The latest set of Experience Levels were added, adjusting the number of points required and making a whole new set of levels up to 60. Auz keeps a thread of what level a user would have had if they were pre-2007. User Pages The format/storage of User Pages changed; as explained by Malachy: "Previously your account was tied to a unique user ID and your profile was a pop up box with some information. That changed in 2007 when the site was redesigned and each profile was given it's own page and url based on the user name. Your username is part of a permanent page of the site that has a specific URL (username.newgrounds.com)" Loss of Failing Features A few existing features were not supported: The Batting Averages for Authors failed to work with the new systems and are not updated, though they are still present and out of date. The Magazine, with the Alphas and the Interviews no longer works. The Alphas have sat inaccessible ever since- they always have the same error message featuring Darnell, implying that they are only temporarily out of order. The Interviews have not been updated since 2007 and feature a The-Swain interview from 2006 at the top. As of November 2010, if you click on NG Mag Home the following message still appears: "NG Mag was a work in progress that never quite made it to completion. Much of it will return with upcoming features! Alphas and interviews will both return, don't worry!" The motto of the site changed from "The Problems of Tomorrow, Today!" to "Everything by Everyone". There are pix of the site on the day of changing on the Newgrounds Archive site. 2012 At the end of 2010, Tom Fulp hinted that 2011 would be a year of significant change for Newgrounds and openly admitted that a redesign was in the works. As time went on though, the redesign was delayed to early 2012.http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1287358 The redesign finally started February 6th, 2012 at 10:00 AM EST. Newgrounds was under maintenance for about a day and a half before the redesign went live. Many changes were made to the site by the redesign, most specifically a more modern look on collections and the BBS as well as a completely redone style to the review system. The organisation of the various sections of the site was substantially changed, so that visitors can focus more on the one type of submission that interests them. However, although, for example one can go to Games and only see games a Classic option was retained so that one can see, for example, all the Recently Uploaded submissions together. 2015 The voting system was changed to, as Tom Fulp said, "one vote per user, per submission". 2018 In April 18, 2018, Tom Fulp announced that PsychoGoldfish pushed a bunch of updates live. User pages were redesigned to be mobile-friendly and brought back page headers (but with a modern flair, where they stretch to fill the screen), removed the secondary icon, the site header was changed to fit the screen and feeds obtained a new "react" feature.https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1431424 Voting was unified between the site content portals https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1435215, and the forums were updated to the new mobile-friendly layout.https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1437387 September Voting changes On the 20th September, Tom announced changes to the way that voting works, finalising the process of changing from the old "zero-bomb" multi-vote system to a system where the user has one vote on a submission, fully linked to one review, giving just one score, with the option of changing their vote. One of the effects of this change was the total loss of records of millions of votes from submissions, meaning the vote count started from scratch on this day. The full details are HERE Category:History Category:Newgrounds Culture